Man Reports Self to Police for Ripping DVDs

It’s not as daft as it sounds. Henrik Anderson, a Danish citizen, turned himself into police, confessing he had broken Danish anti-piracy laws by breaking the Digital Rights Management (DRM) on more than one hundred legally purchased DVDs. He did so because he wants some clarification. It seems, under Danish law, it’s okay to copy, and at same time not okay to copy.

Danish law allows the owner digital media to make private, non-commercial copies of works they own. And, it prohibits owners from making such copies without the rightholder’s consent if the copying circumvents DRM.

Anderson initially sought clarification from the Danish anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen: was he a criminal or not? Antipiratgruppen never got back to Anderson on whether he would be prosecuted, so he took, for him, the next logical step: he turned himself in. Anderson wants a trial so the law can be clearly established.

Anderson may have a broader motive here--drawing attention both to the inconsistency in the law, and to the matter of whose rules he should be following: the laws of Denmark or the dictates of the lawyers for the companies whose DRM is being circumvented.

Comments

This exact conflict exists in the US, and I do not think it has been dealt with. It is pretty sad that the law is such that nobody knows what it means until someone is taken to court and judges decide what the law is. I am not familiar with the Danish system, but that is not how it is supposed to work in the US. Judges are not supposed to be deciding what the law is. The legislature passes the law and the courts apply it. "Case law" is a complete departure from the concept that we have a government of, by, and for the people.

The way the second paragraph is worded, the law seems to be totally clear: the owner may copy digital media for private, non-commercial uses, unless the material is protected by DRM, in which case the owner must seek permission from the copyright owner. Seems pretty clear.

The confusion resides in the fact that it's two seperate laws coming into conflict.

One law, the older and established one, states that you have the right to make copies of anything you own for your own personal use. There is NO equivocation here. This is a RIGHT that the consumer has.

The second law, much newer, states that you can't break DRM.

So, what you have here is a pretty underhanded attempt to undermine one law with another, while still maintaining the illusion that the consumer has some rights. There have been no real tests of this law anywhere that i know of, to date, because at the moment the companies are wasting their money going after P2P file sharers. Sooner or later, however, they'll turn their focus to other avenues, I'm sure.

A legal precedent such as the one this man seems to be trying to force WILL be very interesting to see.

One of the funny things is that some of the original wording of the DRM laws was... open to interpretation, with things like "It is unlawful to use any means to bypass protections that effectively secure a product" or some such... in which the question immediately becomes what definition of 'effective' are we using here? Where the product is secured, in effect? Or where the product is effectively secured? Cause believe me, if I can crack it, the security ain't effective.